Maruti Fooling Around Once Again. Review on Maruti Suzuki SX4

I test drove SX4 4 times in a week. Actually I am a maruti fan just because their reasonable pricing and wide service networks. I have always been arguing with friends speaking high on Maruti hoping that at least SX4 will provide a different offering competing with international products. To my dismay, Maruti has once more launched another cheap product. People upgrade to C segment primarily for luxury, looks, status, driving pleasure etc. Here is my conclusion after 4 test drives:

Looks: Great looks from outside, although it is a personal preference, nothing much to say about it.

Interiors: Really shabby and ugly defeating the whole purpose of a C seg car. I do not know why maruti cant employ a team of designers (or outsource this job to a team with brains). Rear seat is a hell from the sides for a tall person and hell from the middle even for a short person. After sitting for 1 hour I got back ache. I bet that 3 people with normal built can not sit properly in this widest, longest and tallest car, space management is pathetic.

Although the dashboard is huge but there is hardly any utility space. Look at Aveo or Fusion, how beautifully they have carved the utility spaces. Maruti knows only to provide plain cylindrical dashboard with cheap plastics. Instead of providing chrom they have provided chrome finish plastics. For 7.5 lakh I expect beige interiors, maruti is infamous of providing dark looking grey interiors because of which internal space looks congested. Use of light is extremely poor. Interior desing looks as if it has been done by a graduate trainee. Stereo quality is pathetic, I expect better speakers for this price, just look at Aveo 1.4 LS and compare.

Engine: Power 102 horses: doesnt look like.... engine is not at all responsive in low revs and 2 and 3 gears... typical maruti.... I was not surprised... At higher speed the ride was good... 16" tyres was a cool feature which should be provided by others... full marks to Maruti for this. Engine noise was quite audible, the sales person was playing FM so that I could ignore that but still I could hear that... shows that engine is not that refined which I was expecting with the bloated M SERIES.... I get the reason now why Suzuki is not picking up anywhere other than India... Indian consumers are plain and simple and you can sell them any sh*t.

I test drove Fiesta, Fusion, Verna, Aveo, City, Corolla (lets leave corolla for now). I would say that best value for money is being provided by AVEO be it price, styling, looks, interior (too good) or engine refinement (ground clearance 181). Verna diesel is like rocket, lets not talk about it as Aveo1.4 on road is only 5.8 lakh in Delhi and Verna is 8.5 lakh.

Though being a proud Indian I still say that lets learn something from Americans too since we have not properly learnt from Japanese. Aveo 1.4 base is lot more refined than M Series in almost all the aspects. I would suggest the buyers to have a look in other cars also and break the typical Indian mentality of Maruti cars, Nokia phones and bajaj scooters etc which we have learnt from our grand parents. SX4 is not an economical car for this price, **do look for other options as you will be compromising on comfort, cosiness, status and driving pleasure just for Maruti tag.

My take will be like this:

Fiesta: **for better city driving and handling

Aveo: Overall VFM

Verna Diesel: Best if you can spend upto 8.5 lakhs

Someone has rightly said that Maruti means Quantity but NO Quality. I am sorry if it hurts to a maruti fan but it hurt me more as it shattered my expectations being another Maruti fan.